a somewhat lighter shade than the Filipinos, pleasant with agreeable faces. They are so fat they appear swollen. They remain in good health to an advanced age and it is very normal to live ninety or one hundred years. . . ."
Notwithstanding this description, the Chamorros were extremely vain about their tawny physical symmetry, being more shapely than the Spaniards, which may have accounted for the persistent Spanish desire not only to reduce their numbers systematically, but to subdue and break this racial residue into a polyglot indolence.
The aboriginal Chamorros were a simple and poetic race, and their poets were considered preternaturally endowed in a class with their makahnas (sorcerers) who, being village soothsayers, were the nearest thing they had to priests. Therefore, with their uncomplex character and their natural, easy life, it is not difficult to understand why they looked upon their race with a peacock's vanity, considering their own breed the earth's most supreme. All other nations, in their eyes, were contemptible in comparison. This pride was doubtless based in the legend of their origin (see Chapter 7—Origin, Religion, and Legend), which taught them to believe themselves to be the earth's original people born of a mighty unseen force, and their language to be the prime instrument of speech in the world—all others being false mispronunciations of their own glorious tongue.
They possessed, according to one account, "great strength as fitting to their statures," and they bleached their naturally rich black hair to a yellowish shade, some of the men tying theirs in a knot at the base of their necks, and the women allowing theirs to trail down their backs, sometimes touching the ground. The Chamorros wore no clothes in Magellan's day, although the women did occasionally sport a small woven triangle apron (called a tifi) to cover themselves, or fringes of grass or leaves hung from a waistband. The men, however, used no such adornment and went entirely naked except for sunshade visors and full-brimmed hats made from pandanus leaves which they wore when farming or fishing. In accounts after Magellan, the Chamorro men are described as shaving their heads, leaving a small crest about a finger long on the crown. Some of them wore thick, short beards but are pictured as having extremely muscular, hairless bodies. The aborigines apparently did not tattoo themselves or pierce their ears or noses, although both sexes anointed themselves with fragrant coconut oil and washed their hair with the soap orange.
Being completely isolated from the rest of the world, not counting the probable occasional visits of the Caroline Islanders in their own times of social disruption, the native populace had remained remarkably free from disease, just as their thriving plants were free from blight. Their physical prowess, coupled with exuberant health, made their endurance almost legendary in quality. Padre García in his descriptive Life of Padre Sanvitores tells that even ". . . among those who were baptized the first year of the mission there were more than 120 who were past the age of a hundred years; owing perhaps to their rugged constitutions, inured from their infancy to the distempers which afterwards do not affect them, or to the uniformity and naturalness (naturalidad) of their food without the artifice which gluttony has introduced to waste the life which it sustains, or to their occupations necessitating plenty of exercise without too great fatigue, or to the absence of vices and worries—which are roses and thorns whose pricking and piercing put an end to man—or perhaps all of these causes combined contribute to the prolix age of these islanders. As they know few infirmities so they know few medicines, and cure themselves with a few herbs which necessity and experience have taught them to be possessed of some virtue."
On festive occasions the women adorned their heads with wreaths of flowers and necklaces of tortoise shell hung from a band of red spondylus shells—their equivalent of pearls. They made pendant belts of small coconuts, nicely fitted over skirts or fringes of tree root, described in early times as "rather a cage than a dress . . ." Since betel-nut chewing was universally popular then, the aborigines' teeth were stained black (some say this was for ornament), and their bleached hair accented in strange contrast the teeth and smooth beige skin.
ANCIENT SOCIETY
According to Laura Thompson the aborigines were grouped ". . . into matrilineal clans localized in hamlets and villages and organized into districts under local chiefs. The power of the chiefs was based on inherited wealth in the form of land and special prerogatives such as the right to make certain types of 'shell money' and sailing canoes."
Miss Thompson defines three social classes: the nobility, the commoners, and the slaves. Slaves in the society were actually menial servants and were probably better off under this system than they would have been in almost any other aboriginal civilization one can think of. The upper class, oddly enough, consisted not of lazy aristocrats but of artisans and craftsmen: carpenters, mariners, warriors, and fishermen. They acted as foremen in these professions, assisted in their supervisory work by the commoners; but the commoners in turn—no matter how great their knowledge—were barred by taboo from ever attaining the exalted positions of the nobility (Chamorri). Naturally, this in itself preserved the sovereignty of the noblemen.
Agaña, according to most sources, was the acknowledged ancient capital of the island. "The chiefs of Agaña," states Miss Thompson, "were feared and respected by the inhabitants of the whole island and an elaborate code of etiquette regulated social relations and upheld their prestige. Those of low station were not permitted to eat or drink in the houses of the nobles or even to go near them. If they needed anything they asked for it from a distance. They practised many courtesies and an ordinary salutation on meeting and on passing in front of one another was 'Aki Arinmo' (ati adengmo), meaning 'Give me permission to kiss your feet.' . . . To pass the hand over the breast of the host was considered a great courtesy. This custom has been superseded by the manñgiñge or smelling the hand."
Before discussing aboriginal houses, it is interesting to add another social note. In Agaña and in all the larger villages there was always a "great house," or "long house" as they were sometimes called. This public building of considerable size was communal and frequented by the urritaos or young bachelors; in it unmarried men and women lived together in apparent concord and most certainly in youthful pleasure.
Laura Thompson states: "The premarital consorting of the sexes in the Marianas was institutionalized in clubhouses as in other parts of Micronesia. . . ." Marriage, however, was quite another matter and usually an intensely monogamous affair, although at certain periods in the aboriginal culture a man could have more than one wife. The accent on monogamy, strangely, has carried over into modern times, and even today, after the buffetings and subjections of over four hundred years of rape, reduction, intermarriage and invasion, the Chamorro sense of honor and fidelity within the family is remarkably strong and important to the island people.
But in the long houses there was no such rigid family code; the life was open and free and continually gay. Custom allowed the freedom of the communal houses to the young urritaos for purposes of companionship, either with their male friends or with young women whom they had often purchased from the parents or had merely hired on a time-arrangement basis. Oddly enough, this did not seem to affect the girl's later chances for marriage (or the man's), and both were usually married in due time to suitable individuals. As in other Pacific islands where this custom prevailed, it is probable that girls who were obtained from their families for consorts to the urritaos came from isolated villages and not from the town of the communal house in which they lived. There was apparently no undue promiscuity to the long-house arrangements, and the relationships were as scrupulously guarded and respected as in the most proper marriage. (Sexual relations between people of kin were considered heinous; these did not occur in the long-house relationships and would not have been tolerated.)
Marriage amounted almost to purchase. A young suitor would be forced to offer his service to the parents and a fee for his bride. The fee might be collected either from him or from his relatives. In frequent cases the groom himself might have enough property of his own to make a present to the father of the bride. With the advent of children, in marriage the mother became the central figure of the clan. Decisions were always hers, and the husband was always the lesser of the parents when he was at home. A son would usually grow up with little fear or respect for his father, and he could be openly insolent to him if he stood in his mother's favor, for the mother would protect the son from paternal punishment.
Despite